Jack's gaze leads to the puddle he'd been trying to suck up into his needle and isn't that just in the true spirit of Rapture? Find a thing that everybody wants and in the process of fighting over it, they trample the value right out of it.

But Sinclair did make a promise earlier.

"We'll find you an alternative, okay chief? We'll figure out how to get you more, but right now we gotta keep truckin'. That there should tide you over until we find more."

He has no idea how they're going to do that, unless Jack rescues enough little sisters to eventually equal what he would have normally gotten otherwise. But that second conversation with Tenenbaum is looking more and more extremely necessary.